


Only If For A Night

by arachnida



Series: GoT Verse [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Cults, Gangbang, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, May/December Relationship, Public Humiliation, Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 06:17:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15430833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arachnida/pseuds/arachnida
Summary: What once was an enfante terrible turned into child king by superstition, now a beloved lord with only one subject.Or, Macario Sancta Fide wakes up from a terrible nightmare; Lazarus asks and gets more than he bargained for.





	Only If For A Night

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the Florence + the Machine song b/c it took me a week to admit it was perfect for them.  
> Please don’t read/engage if any of the warnings are an issue. Most of the dark stuff is actually in flashback; Laz and Maca have a fairly healthy relationship in all honesty.
> 
> Macario – Cae’s, about 21-24  
> Gilles – also Cae’s, about 40-50, dead as shit  
> Lazarus – Mine, about 38-42

Macario awoke with a start.

The air wavered to and from his mouth, altogether hot and cold. As he heaved himself forward, the sheets and those images clung like water to his skin. The boy crossed his arms, hands spread to smooth the invisible wounds. His skin was moist, but unbroken; his heart beat in his throat, but nothing stopped it.

The ground gave a soft thump as he stepped forward to reorient himself.

Those hymns had receded to a distant echo, displaced by the lull of the tides from outside their window and Laz's quiet snoring.

Nothing hurt, Macario reassured himself.

His knees still buckled as he crossed the threshold to the lancet, steadying himself against its frame. <i> _They're gone now. You killed them, remember? </i>_

The spot that he left was cold and wet, clammy as Lazarus balled the sheet in his hand. The moisture stirred him as he opened his eyes, looking at the boy who had grown into a soft featured, and terribly haunted, young man with the serenity that came from being aroused from his sleep by demons he had never seen nor experienced. He pushed himself up and landed softly on his feet, but his weight allowed him to be heard. He looked at the boy prince he had grown fond of and asked, "Can't sleep?"

He kept a few paces back, gentle and passive; never once forcing himself too close to his young lover. Force had broken him and Lazarus found he did best with tenderness.

Macario shook his head. The moonlight illuminated his hair in a crest of silver, its color like that of a selkie's coat. Those eyes-- downcast and reticent-- anchored themselves outward, avoiding Laz's.

He'd hoped the other man would stay asleep, at least for a few more hours. Or, even better, until he'd regathered these memories, tucked them into their respective drawers and re-locked the cabinets. But, his mentor had a knack for this sort of thing, appearing from behind where he wasn't necessarily wanted.

'But needed' a small part of him chastised. His lips flatlined, unsure if he could count himself irritated or relieved.

"It was a nightmare," he admitted. The prince turned, gaze dragging to the floor. "But, it's gone now."

The boy's voice was almost drowned by the tides outside. He was ghost-like, a spirit of sorts that less danced and more...

"Lingering?" Lazarus offered, both the word and a hand.

He was a patient man. He had lived forty years by patience and he would die in forty more by patience.

"What of, Macario?" He asked in that way a man his age could: knowing the answer but still wanting to hear the truth in its entirety.

"Lingering," Macario repeated. He liked the word, so he took it.

But, Lazarus'd asked for more than that; he'd sensed the other man's expectation, even in the darkness.

The pit at his stomach grew and then dropped, a penny in a well that compressed his center inward. With it, his heart paced and his balance faltered beneath an indescribable, yet familiar sense of dread.

 _Breathe, Macario_  the other man'd once instructed. The floor moved beneath his feet. His grip anchored tighter to window's frame.

But, he managed to shake his head.

"Nothing" was easier said than "everything," so he settled on that too.

Lazarus walked a few paces closer but still maintained distance for the both of them. Macario had his boundaries and limitations; he had all the respect in the world for someone that self-aware of these things.

"Nothing?" He asked with that inflection, his need to probe and understand someone he loved dearly. Even if he were an ocean away, he'd send messages in bottles for the boy to read. "Nothing can cause dread, but I don't believe I've heard it causing terror."

He continued looking at Macario, waiting for his signal to come closer, to ask the right questions and break down the walls.

Macario withdrew with a backwards step.

Once, the boy considered his cruelty a source of strength.  The lack of nuance made him comprehensible because there was universality in consequence.

_Hurt me and I'll hurt you._

_Equal pay for equal retribution._

Yet, Lazarus' gaze did not falter, neutral in its lack of judgment. Even at the height of his volatility; even as Macario caught himself between an impulse to lash out and run.

Somehow.

Somehow, the other man counted him better than the sum of his hurt.

Cautiously, Macario turned himself back, urged his heel forward again. His head eventually met Lazarus' chest with a soft bump. The prince was just as much protecting the pain as he was himself. Laz had told him that. At any rate, the poison will become indistinguishable from the parts uninfected.

That part too.

"It's not nothing," the prince mumbled into the skin. "Just something I hadn't thought about in a while. Strange how dreams do that, huh?"

Lazarus exhaled softly, these moments always tense. He placed his hands on Macario's shoulders, as if laying them on the arm of a chair. No grip, no tension; relaxed as his demeanor. He nodded into that nest of warm brown hair, several strands of silver peeking through. Age would be kind to him.

"It is, indeed. Dreams have a way to bring what's buried to the surface."

 

He looked at his student, his companion, his beloved with that same patience that lasted as long as stone. "What happened in your dream?" he asked with that sincerity, that soft voice that wanted to pull the truth from Macario and weave his tale with him and have it exorcised from him once and for all.

"I'm back at home. I'm twelve again, turning thirteen. It is my birthday."

He'd said that part in-private once, just to feel the words on his lips. But, Macario furrowed his brow, trailing off before the details narrowed and then tapered to the likeness of a single dark corridor. He added context as a means of distraction "There was a prophecy." Lazarus knew that. "I was a messiah." Everyone knew that.

He buried his head into the man's neck. "...And thirteen's a holy number."

Lazarus held his head and nodded. "Go on."

The waves rumbled outside, with high tide around the corner. He could feel every ounce of tension and every knot tightening

tightening

strangling the both of them.

And he let himself stay pliable, a captive audience for his young paramour. One hand was on Macario's back, sandwiched in the middle of his scapula, two wings guarding his heart.

_I'm outside your door. Waiting for you to let me in._

His eyes closed against Lazarus' touch.

\--

A smaller version of himself stepped through the corridor, illuminated by torchlight. Beside him was a man whose face he thought he'd forgotten, holding his wrist in a way he'd come to forbid upon threat of death.

_Gilles._

He pulled at that hand.

It tightened, yanking him forward.

At the corridor's end, the hymns continued as they'd left off, notes crescendoing with each refrain to welcome the pair.

Macario's drunk on something cloyingly sweet, a syrup with an aftertaste that reminded him of copper. His heart pulsed as they moved, the streams of light stretching and dulling from focus. Whatever he'd eaten slowed his thoughts, reassured with that song that what would come would be undesired, but he would be fine.

Suffering necessitates wisdom; and, just as the tides are everlasting, so was he.

The door opened to a congregation. Beyond the lowered heads, a small, thread-bare cot awaited them.

He shut the door before he'd realized that he had.

\--

"The rest is self-explanatory," he stated, the justification painted in Lazarus' own didactic tone. His shaking offset the firmness of his tone. Inevitably, the other man would notice.

"... And I'm getting cold."

Lazarus nodded and brought them both to the bed, draping the young man in their shared blanket. He looked terribly haunted.

"It is self-explanatory. But I want to hear it in its entirety. From you."

His hand held Macario's shoulder with that loving firmness to keep the boy steady. He knew the truth was more hideous than a flayed corpse; more putrid than rot; more monstrous than a beast.

But the truth was like love and best accepted in all its faults. "You do not have to. But I'm asking because I want to hear your story. I wouldn't ask if I didn't."

Macario craned his head toward Laz, eyes as round and glassy as a fish's. He gave the other man a peck to his chin and then, slumping forward, he lowered his body against the other man's in increments. When his head settled into Laz's lap, Macario curled himself into the blanket to nurse the emptiness at his center. The ache continued in small ripples.

\--

He'd been lead like a bride by her father's hand, down the aisle and up the altar to face their audience in holy matrimony. A pair of handlers removed Gilles' coat, bowing as he raised his hand to dismiss them.

His sermon was peppered with promises beyond his power to keep, and predictions of salvation beyond his comprehension to teach. Macario registered every other word of it, focusing instead on his breathing. The prince might have left were he not so beside himself; if those hands hadn't kept him in place as their owner spoke, trailing along his sides and then up his shirt tails to pop the buttons.

The same handlers that removed Gilles' coats lead Macario to the cot, holding him by the wrists.

Gilles moved between the boy's legs.

Macario thrashed.

Through the haze as a pair of thick, wet lips pressed to his stomach, and then trailed upward. Each kiss followed a pause to savor the futility of his struggle before that mouth stopped at the curve between his neck and ear. His breath carried a whisper just above the prayer:

"You're so goddamned beautiful. If there's anything you'll learn from this, it's the virtue of humility,  _my prince_."

\--

A tear fell across the nose of his bridge, meeting his other eye as he trailed off again. "People do bad things all the time though.

I'd expected nothing less and it made that easier. I hated him up through the day I killed him."

Lazarus was cold and still, hand cupping Macario's shoulder. He shuddered as he recounted, eyes widened and brow furrowing. He couldn't summon any rage for a dead monster but he felt a sense of peace knowing the prince lying beside him was the one who destroyed him.

"My god," he murmured. A lone tear shed and splashed on Macario dead in the center between his eyes. And as he saw his beautiful, human lover, all he could truly say was ask why, how this horrible thing came to pass.

 _Go deeper_ , he always said in times like these. This was no exception.

\--

Gilles let Macario know his satisfaction as they fucked, his thrusts deep and unrelenting. He repeated his taunts with those prayers, with that singing. All of it, a sham to disguise a damp, sticky ugliness that Macario'd known since they'd first met. His knees lifted as Gilles took to a closer angle, hips rolling to meet his.

"Does it feel good, Macario? Did you imagine your first time like this?"

Macario groaned as the weight pressed through him. The pilling wool had become an unpleasant friction to his back; the throbbing acute where their hips met.

"I feel good, though. You feel so, so good." The older man ran his tongue over Macario's lips. A hard thrust forced an open gasp and then a deep, dominating kiss.

The pain overtook him eventually, even if he wouldn't register its extent until morning. As he lay, limp against the other man's hold, his gaze took to the ceiling behind his head.

"That's more like it. You're prettier like this. But, it doesn't just end with me, you know.”

Gilles turned him to their followers, hands moving to the boy's front to tease his nipples. Macario withheld a sob.

“I'll be your first, but I won't be your last."

His hand fluttered downward to his cock, lingering over his stomach and sides before stroking its prize. The free one steadied the boy by his hip. And then the thrusts slowed, apologetically, allowed Macario the space to revel in the pleasure given.

"You're the messiah to a movement you condescend. Did you think I didn't know? The way you look at me when I tried to teach you, how you felt in my hands, even now."

A squeeze.

"Well. Now, you're beneath even me; even these people you consider stupid. Delusional. Ironic, isn't it? A messiah that hates his followers; followers that fuck its messiah, claiming worship from on-high."

Gilles licked Macario's cum from his index finger. Then he smiled, sweetly, laying the boy to the bed, filled with his own release.

He pulled up his pants, shaking his head. A brief pause to regain himself from the post-coital bliss.

Then, to the congregation, he said:

"I've done a despicable, yet necessary thing. One cannot live without hurting another; just as our messiah cannot ascend without being hurt. In our union, there is symbiosis. Holiness birthed from sin."

The crowd stood dutifully, the handlers joining the line.

"May mercy be had on my soul. May I carry these regrets to the grave.

...May we carry this betrayal, committed against our lord."

The man stood to watch as, one by one, they repeated Gilles' performance. When his eyes met Gilles', taken from behind, taken sitting up, then bent over the cot, the other man beamed quietly, a faint hum to his victory.

\--

Macario ran his hand over his face, finally noticing his own tear as it intermingled with Lazarus'.

"But, more than that," he mumbled. "I wanted that to be worth something. And it was. For a long time, I felt as if it was."

Lazarus held Macario's hand, watching as he gutted himself, cutting through the emotional abscesses to lance the pus that festered underneath. There was more, he was sure of.

"How? What made that horrible crime worth it, Maca?"

_How do you compose yourself with such dignity in the face of that brutality, cruelty, humiliation._

Another man might've killed themselves from the shame; another, repeated that cruelty ad infinitum. And yet another, stagnate, standing water that bred vermin and disease.

There was hurt in Lazarus' eyes; hurt for his lover, powerless in the knowledge of Macario’s childhood; himself, for asking for the truth in his desire to know everything about this boy he loved dearly; for a people who would trust a swindler and devil like Gilles Iscariot, a man who wove words of quicksilver and fool's gold and reaped his rewards like a bandit in a king's castle.

And somewhere in those sad, sad eyes was awe for Macario's incredible tenacity, his resolve so strong a knight would yearn for its weight in steel.

Macario laced his fingers through Lazarus', two hands forming one heart-shaped silhouette. The tears flowed freely now, embarrassing and hot as they affirmed the wretchedness of his situation.

The story wasn't sad because of its events; it was sad because of their inherent pointlessness. Macario had been born to be broken, his suffering a cosmic joke told to an audience that consisted of himself first, and Laz second.

"I'd learned that when I wanted something, I was patient enough to wait for it. All those years, I'd pretended that I was his loving pet, that he'd won and I worshiped him for it. And then, when he'd least expected it..."

He shook his head, wistful in his bitterness. "But, he's alive still. The rest of them are. Within me. In these dreams. I'm keeping them alive through my hate." The emptiness grew, edging beyond his gut to consume his soul. He faltered, unclasping his hand from Laz's.

"Sorry. I guess I haven't learned better after all."

Somewhere in between the tears Lazarus pulled up Macario into an embrace. He held him as if he were a shattering icon, determined to keep the both of them together.

What a cruel, pointless joke the cosmos had made.

He stayed silent still, his own tears flowing freely against Macario's skin, the salt water stinging like fine line cuts. He wept for his innocence, his safety, his home; all of it a self-serving lie.

"You've learned more than you could imagine," Lazarus whispered in Macario's ear, kissing his cheek. "My beautiful Macario."

He kissed his forehead, his eyes, the tears; intermingling with his delayed reactions to Macario's lingering resentment. "My beautiful boy, who is no messiah, but my lord all the same."

Macario blinked, unsure in his vulnerability, unhinged and overwhelmed by Lazarus' affections.

To every tragedy, there is catharsis that follows hubris; a period of rest to the swell of a symphony. Macario had long forsaken his, a boy who'd hurt those who'd hurt him, given equal pay for equal retribution but found no satisfaction in either. Perhaps it was in his nature, like the title he'd borne upon exile.

_Macario Sancta Fide the Cruel._

Or, perhaps it was just an inheritance-- passed from the Sancta Fide mother to her only kin.

_"I did everything I'd been asked. But, the grief has never left me."_

He hadn't expected relief, so delayed in its appearance; much less from a man he might've killed, at a peasant's inn so far from Castle Stelmaria. Called beautiful, too. It was his beauty that'd started this, was it not?

He laughed. And then he cried, shaking his head, as he pressed a kiss to the other man's lips. "Thank you."

Lazarus returned the kiss. "For what, my dear?" he whispered, genuine curiosity in his voice.

Olive green eyes looked into amber, leathered hands cupping youthful cheeks. And another kiss, and another, adoration healing abuse.

Macario leaned into that last kiss, tilting his head to deepen it. Those hands, that warmth like a shelter from the cold-- from the window and from within.

Between a break, he said, "Because no matter how far you've lead me, I settle back into those habits. Over and over, I've become the person he's made me; I linger and I hate and I destroy, but it's never enough."

The prince readjusted himself in the other man's lap, hands thumbing the back of his shirt. His forehead met the other man's shoulder.

"It's irritating, isn't it? Watching someone repeat their mistakes like this. I'm supposed to be better. You believed I could be."

Lazarus responded by rolling them over, to where he hovered over the boy, kissing his forehead. "Darling, what you feel is pain. You will never be better than pain; to feel pain is to be human."

His chin, each eye, each cheek; gifted with a kiss and a gentle brushing of his beard. "I believe you can be better because you have been. You’ve spared me; you’ve kept your cruelty in check in the years you have been my companion."

He proposed with a slight tease, "Is it cruel to be an aging man's last until his dying days."

Macario turned against the pillows, playfully batting against Lazarus' kisses. When the other man'd stopped to asked the question, the boy sighed, the fatigue of his emotions finally taking its toll. His breath slowed and the air passing freely with the ocean's breeze.

He turned to Lazarus, the backdrop a ceiling of rendered wood and a face Macario'd found trustworthy since he’d first met it.

The reminder was hard to accept, just as the truth often was. The positive just as much as the negative, Laz would have added.

"I feel better about that.

...But," he added gravely, "I'd feel even better, closer to you."

Lazarus grinned, teeth present and wiles in his eyes. "That so?"

He could feel Macario's shudders when he took the tone and loved them every time. He snaked between his legs, feeling himself against him. Both hands were under the boy's shirt, thumbs pressing into his nipples.

"How close?"

Macario moaned as those thumbs kneaded, the skin taut beneath his touch. Lazarus smelled of parchment preservatives and ink; this close, he also noted a hint of salt, the inn's bar soap. The boy rubbed his thighs against the other man's, hips raising slightly to meet his.

"Closer," Macario whispered. His hands took Lazarus' wrists, guiding them downward.

"I need you to take me there."

He held him, hot as an iron rod in the cool room. He moved a hand to hike Macario's leg over his shoulder and cupped his ass, pulling him upward.

"Only if I go there with you."

His kisses were deadly, all beguiling charm like his words as his tongue danced in Macario's mouth, a playful darting motion. He maneuvered out of his trousers, kicking them to the floor beside them. Using his free hand, he urged Macario to raise his hips a hair, taking to shoving a pillow under him both for angle and comfort.

He took a good look at the little lord he was so terribly fond of, how he aged magnificently into a young man. As beautiful and as haunted as he always had been, but time softening his cruelty with experience. He urged him out of his shirt, svelte yet lanky build not unlike a willow tree. He smiled and kissed him again, before peppering down a tickling trail of kisses down to his chin, then throat and collarbone; between his ribs and down his stomach; beard hair tickling his length. Before long, he took him in, experience leading well as he started gentle and slow, taking his time. He savored Macario, the feeling of him in his mouth as pleasant as the first time. It showed in his fingers being coy, prodding and preparing him with the same languidness of his oral play.

The sharp bucking into his mouth and the moans were some of his favorite songs in the world, stroking and sucking into a rhythm as he waited for Macario to beg and plead for relief.

Macario arched his head back into the pillow, turning against his hair as the other man sucked him. He muttered his name, shameless in the little "ah"'s and "please's" that accented it, as those fingers reached deeper and that mouth took more of him.

What was once a tool leveraged for matters of power and politics, the prince now indulged for its simple pleasures. Within Lazarus' body, his motions, the totality of his existence, there was comfort and love and safety and...

"I'm close. I want you in me," he begged, voice tight. "Please."

Lazarus gave the prince the heat of his hand, the warmth of his mouth, and the satisfying feeling of a slow, steady push inside. His free hand held his hips and pulled the prince to him, intent on filling him totally.

"Comfortable, my lord?" He offered with a tease and a peck to the check, taking a look into his eyes again. He let out a contented sigh, Macario wrapping around him like a well-worn and loved glove.

Macario smiled, eyes still sore from his tears. An exhale to revel in the other man's girth and then those eyes closed. His head nuzzled into Lazarus' neck, nodded quietly against his beard.

Lazarus pecked his forehead and slowly, painfully so, pulled out until all but the head was gone. And then slowly, pushed, heaved in as far as he could. He held Macario in his hand, stroking him slowly in time with each deep thrust that pushed into his core.

He sighed his name like a dream. "You feel fantastic, Maca, my god," he groaned into the boy's ear, a twitch punctuating the sentiment inside.

"So fucking  _good_ ," he groaned, drawing it out like the next thrust that wanted to go even faster but still he persisted, wanting every thrust to be as thorough as his kiss; as total as his affections. He pumped him slowly, gently, the sticky wetness coming out of the head in little dribbles.

His toes curled as Lazarus rocked into him, the mattress dipping beneath his back with each thrust. Macario moaned, squeezed his eyes tighter as he felt more of the other man, thick and creamy, pushed deeper inside.

These were the lines Gilles had whispered to him so long ago. Even through the years, he recalled these words delivered softly to his ear, punishing in its intent. Lazarus said he was beautiful, that he'd felt good because he sincerely found him so. He allowed the gratification to fill him, its pleasure pure and all-encompassing.

"Please. Don't hold back."

A pause and a grin. "Have I ever?"

His mouth and tongue matched the rhythm of his hips, increasing in speed as it became a cycle of tongue thrusting into mouth; cock thrusting into ass; a back and forth dance for a beast with two backs. His hand left Macario, holding his hips to rock into him, maintaining each meticulous thrust's speed as he pushed himself deeper, deeper still.

"My lord, my lord," Lazarus chanted in Macario's ear like a beautiful prayer. His voice was more frantic in each syllable, losing himself to the feeling but he wouldn't; not until Macario did. They sank into the pillows, into the cushy mattress like a pleasurable quicksand as he kept fucking him harder and harder still; he'd never undo the damage Gilles had done, but for a night, for a moment...

He could do that much.

Macario's tears were gone, leaving all but its lingering taste. Lazarus swallowed these as they kissed and they fucked, the sensations displacing his memories with their physicality.

Undine was a lifetime away; changed beyond recognition by a kinder, more forgiving queen.

And he was here-- a despised prince to millions, now a beloved lord before his only subject. He brought his arms from his shoulders to the other man's neck.

_If there was something he'd considered worthwhile._

_If he'd gained one thing in this existence, at least..._

"I'm glad we met," Macario mouthed.

_I love you._

\--

He came with a sigh, legs and hands falling slack as his breathing settled. Disheveled and moist from sweat, the prince glanced up at Lazarus; eyes glassy, but soft in its contentment.

Lazarus peppered kisses against Macario as he slowed but continued to fuck him, intent on having his release. One last thrust came with him, pulling Macario's hips to him as he filled his young lover, suckling on his throat like a babe. He held him tight as if trying to mesh their bodies into one before finally pulling out, his release still trickling down his cock and residual traces dripping out of Macario.

Lazarus looked into Macario's eyes, adoration radiating from them like the sun with warmth. He gave another kiss to his forehead and another on his lips and whispered against them. "And I you, Macario Sancta Fide."


End file.
